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Friday, April 1, 2011

emphasis and distortion self portrait

I am so pleased with these portraits!
During my cyberspace travels, I have seen these portraits on other art education websites. I taught this lesson after a quick activity using figures in the style of Keith Haring, to display emotion and movement.

The first class, I started with a discussion. I used what I found in a later chapter of this book for inspiration. I asked what students felt the word emphasis means, then asked what was being emphasized in a series of same size circles, five rows by five columns, drawn on my white board. After changing the shape, value, color and size, and talking about some hypothetical s,(textures and form) we learned all the different ways artists can create emphasis; using many of the elements and principles of art. Students were then shown some outlines and past students examples. How was emphasis created? they were asked. They quickly realized that the hands and feet were HUGE and therefore probably traced. We then brain stormed what we could be doing in our portraits with our huge hands and feet and began to plan our compositions.

The sketches resembled little Keith Haring people with big mittens and boots on. We talked about which way our thumbs and toes would point in different poses.

With little guidance, students decided what they were doing and picked up a piece of 18x 24 construction paper, from me. Each time I said something to the effect of, This is the only paper you will get, remember which way your toes and thumbs go!

Students then traced their hands and took off their shoes to trace their feet. Help from others was ok, but not encouraged. I showed them how to flip their wrist to make a left hand a right when traced ;)

During the intro, we talked about distortion, and after their hands and feet were traced, students had to envision looking into a fun house mirror and somehow fit their body in between their hands and feet.

Finally, students were asked to create contrast by adding realistic details, like fingernails and knuckles, to hands and feet.